


the long and steady climb

by violentdarlings



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, F/M, Gen, Theoden and Grima are besties
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-02-13 00:32:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2130339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theodred has a car accident on the way to work. The consequences are far reaching. Modern AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Accident

Dawn finds the occupants of unit 12 sprawled around the living room, playing Fable III and eating Crunchy Nut cereal. The all nighter had begun at dinner time the previous evening, when Éowyn had informed her flatmates she would probably be up til dawn on a last-minute assignment. Immediately, Éomer and Théodred had agreed to stay up with her in solidarity. “You don’t have to,” she’d protested as Éomer washed and Théodred dried.

“Nonsense,” her brother had retorted, pointing a spatula at her with regal authority. “We’re a team in this apartment, sister mine.”

“A team,” Théodred had echoed as he dried a saucepan.

“Thank you, ‘Dred. We’ll sit up with you.”

And that had been that.

Needless to say there was very little frantic essay writing on their part. Éomer had turned on the Xbox around nine pm after making very little effort in studying for his upcoming uni exams, while Théodred was valiantly attempting to study some paperwork for his father. But around midnight Éowyn had looked up from her laptop and her history essay to find Théodred’s keen eyes studying her face, Théoden’s documents abandoned on the floor as her artist cousin sketched.

Edoras Enterprises may be her cousin’s work, but art is his passion.

As the sun peeks through the vast windows in their apartment, Éowyn stands and stretches, feeling her bones and joints shift and resettle.

“Finished?” her brother asks, eyes intent on the TV.

“Finally,” she retorts dryly.

“Sweet,” Éomer says, tossing her the controller. “Finish this boss fight for me, would you? I have to shower.”

“And my scent receptors thank you,” she replies, making a mocking bow in his direction. Théodred is dozing on the sofa, his pencil and sketchpad abandoned on the floor.

“Bitch,” her brother says lightly, slamming the bathroom door for emphasis. Théodred flails, waking with a start, his eyes only half open.

“Curse it, Gríma, I’m awake!” he bellows, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. Éowyn chuckles, finishing the game and setting the controller aside.

“When you’re having nightmares about him, you know it’s time to take a day off.”

“Bloody bastard,” Théodred mumbles, sinking back onto the sofa. “He’s had me going through Father’s accounts for the last ten years.”

“It is his job,” Éowyn protests weakly, but her cousin fixes her with a glare. She relents. “All right, all right, he’s a prick. Happy?”

“Happy,” Théodred agrees, leaning back and closing his eyes. “I’ve got two hours before I have to be at work and suffer through ten hours with him. Lurking, skulking, peering over my shoulder when I’m trying to work.”

Éowyn pats his shoulder in sympathy and makes her way to her room. She’s lived with Théodred and Éomer for the last year, ever since Théodwyn died. By rights she should have gone to live with her uncle, but Théoden had seen how much she’d wanted to be with her brother. And Éomer and Théodred had a spare room, and her brother had sworn up and down to look after her, and so here she was. Fifteen and living with her brother and cousin. Théodred was six years her senior and Éomer four, both students at university, although Théodred’s degree was on hiatus until Théoden was well again…

Was that the _Imperial March_ or was she losing her mind from sleep deprivation? She paused in buttoning her shirt, straining to hear.

“Gríma,” her cousin says, managing to sound both irritated and resigned simultaneously. Of course. Who else would her cousin consider the real world equivalent of Darth Vader? “It’s seven in the morning, for fuck’s sake. Don’t tell me not to swear, Wormtongue! Fucking hell. All right. I’ll leave now.”

When she emerged in her school uniform, attempting to rub the weariness from her eyes, Théodred was scowling and hunting around for his car keys. “Fucking Wormtongue,” he grouses, using the unkind nickname for the second in command of Edoras Enterprises. “Wants me to come in early. Why it _can’t wait_ -”

“You’re not going like that, are you?” she interrupts. Théodred froze, glancing down at his battered T-shirt and paint splattered jeans.

“I suppose not,” he says, stripping his shirt off and making his way to the bedroom. Pointedly Éowyn averts her eyes. When he re-emerges he is clad in dark trousers and a white shirt, rather more fitting for the offices of Edoras.

“Much better,” she approves.

“Give the Worm one less thing to whinge about,” Théodred spits, pulling on his ancient boots as though to spite his father’s counsellor.

“Why do you hate him so?” she asks. “He’s always been polite enough to me.” And he has. Whenever she’d visited the offices of Edoras, her uncle’s counsellor had been scrupulously polite. Enquired after her studies, offered to show her around the vast building. But there was no need. She’d been visiting Edoras since before she was old enough to walk.

Théodred snorts. “Of course he’s polite to you, cousin,” he says sharply. “His eyes follow you around the room whenever you’re present. He would have you, if you’d let him.”

Éowyn can’t help it; she laughs. “Gríma, fancy me?” she echoes in raw astonishment. “That’s ridiculous! He’s got to be twenty years older than me, at least! And he’s so -”

_Strange_ , she wanted to say, but that’s not quite right. Gríma is the antithesis to her tall, golden-haired, strapping kin. Black haired and sickly pale as though he never sees the light of day, and always clad in black. Perfectly tailored suits that highlight the sharp angles of his shoulders and the narrowness of his hips, in contrast to her denim-clad uncle. And yet Gríma has been friends with her uncle since their university days, for all her uncle is in his late forties and Gríma is ten years younger. “Genius!” her uncle had said once, well into his cups and slapping his old friend on the back. “All of sixteen and the brightest fellow in our year.” Gríma had been lurking in a corner, his face steadily turning crimson.

“Regardless,” her cousin goes on, oblivious to her inner reverie. “He watches you.” Uncomfortable, Éowyn punches him lightly on the arm.

“Don’t be stupid, Théodred,” she tells him. “I’m fifteen. That’s not nearly old enough for boys. Or men,” she adds at his raised eyebrow.

“Tell that to the Worm, Éowyn,” her cousin says dryly as he heads to the door, narrowly dodging the pair of socks she aims at his head.

“I hate you,” she says in jest, and he flashes a broad, mischievous smile back over his shoulder.

“I know,” he quips, and the door slams behind him.

_x_

She’s in English class when the knock comes at the door. Mr Balin pauses in his scribbling on the whiteboard, cocking his head inquisitively at the tall figure standing in the doorway. Fili nudges her as his brother whispers in his ear. She hears something about ‘graffiti’ and ‘oh shit’, and manages to hide her grin.

“Forgive the intrusion, Balin,” says Principal Elrond, a frown creasing his usually impassive face. “I require Miss Éofer.”

“Me?” she asks in surprise, as Kili hisses, “ _You_? What did you _do_?” Éowyn ignores him, feeling the heat of her classmates’ stares on her skin.

“You,“ the principal confirms. “Please come with me, Miss Éofer.”

“Whatever it was, I didn’t do it,” she tells him lightly as they stride down the hall. Usually, she has a decent rapport with the principal of Rohan High, but today the principal’s lips are set in a grim, thin line.

“You are not in any trouble, Éowyn,” he tells her, a certain hardness coming over his features as he holds the door open to his office. And that more than anything feeds her slow sensation of impending doom, because Principal Elrond never refers to anyone by their first name. Never, unless something terrible has occurred.

The sight of the slim, ashen man waiting in the principal’s office cements the horror waking up inside of her. “Gríma!” she says without thinking, and the counsellor’s eyes narrow. “Sorry,” she apologises. “Mr Gálmód, is that better?” She doesn’t mean it sarcastically but the counsellor takes it as such.

_Any one else and he’d give them such a tongue lashing as to remember all their days,_ she thinks dryly, and then: _why am I any different?_

_“Miss Éofer,” he_ murmurs, voice low as in awe, or perhaps something else. It is only then that she realises he is shaking, fingers tightening convulsively on the back of the chair that looks to be the only thing holding him up. “I regret to have to - that is, I mean to say -”

“Oh God,” she cuts him off. “It’s Uncle, isn’t it? It is! He’s been fighting for so long, I began to think he’d pull through.” She sinks into a chair, peering up at Gríma, already feeling tears begin to threaten in the tightness of her throat and the burning in her eyes.

“No,” he says, his voice trembling, and impulsively she reaches out to take his hand in her own, gripping it tightly. Almost immediately he squeezes back, his skin cool but just as human as her own. “It’s… Théodred. Your cousin.” His familiar strange features are slack with what can only been grief, and it is as though the world is coming down on top of her. _The last thing I said to him was that I hate him._

“Not dead,” she says hollowly. “Not ‘Dred. No. It cannot be.”

“He’s not dead,” Gríma says quickly, his fingers trembling in her own. “But close. You must come with me, quickly. Your uncle is already at the hospital.”

_x_

Éowyn half expects Gríma to drive like a maniac. To swerve around corners and speed like a lunatic, but he does not. Instead he keeps both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road, even as she starts to sob in the seat beside him.

“What happened?” she whispers, snot clogging her nose and tears slipping down her cheeks, curling in on herself as though to protect her heart from further harm. She sniffs, well aware of how pathetic she sounds. An immaculate white handkerchief thrusts itself into her field of view, attached to a pale, long-fingered hand.

“Wipe your nose, Miss Éofer,” he tells her, steering the car around the corner with grace. “I cannot abide snivelling.” She blows her nose and glares up at him. He is squinting at her out the corner of his eye even as he focuses on the road.

“Fuck you,” she says without intending to. “You bastard.” A faint, hollow smile stretches his lips without mirth.

“Quite so,” he replies, and the rest of the drive is spent in silence until they arrive at the hospital. She throws herself out of the seat and sprints towards Emergency without waiting for the counsellor currently parking his car.

“Théodred Éorl,” she tells the nurse at the desk. “Please. Where is he?”

“Room 23. Down the hall and to your left.” Éowyn doesn’t even bother to thank her. There will be time for all of that later, when she has seen her cousin for her own eyes, touched him and felt the life still in him.

Théoden is slumped on a chair outside the room, and his head jerks up as she races towards him. “Oh, niece,” he says, his tone absolutely wrecked, and pulls her into his arms. She can feel the wet heat of his tears on her throat as he clings to her; through the open door she can see her brother hunched over and a still form draped in a sheet. “Sweet Éowyn.”

“Uncle,” she murmurs, pulling away to press their foreheads together. “He isn’t -”

“No,” he says, eyes falling shut, and her heart leaps with hope. “But - Éowyn -” Tears are still falling down Théoden’s cheeks, and this is not the face of a man whose son is going to be all right. “He’s in a coma. The doctors. They don’t know whether he’ll wake up.”

She stares at him, the bottom falling out of the world, and Gríma appears behind her. “Brother,” her uncle chokes out, and is gone from her side to haul the counsellor into a hard, masculine embrace. “Thank you. Thank you for bringing Éowyn.” Gríma pats her uncle warily on the back, eyes shifting all over the corridor.

“Thank him?” echoes a harsh, deadly voice, as Théoden releases his friend. Éomer stands in the doorway, all six feet and two inches of him, his expression thunderous. Gríma shrinks back as though trying to blend into the wall, but it does him no good. In a handle of long strides Éomer is across the space between them, big hands wrapping around the counsellor’s neck and smashing him up against the wall. “You,” her brother growls, tightening his grip around Gríma’s throat. “This is **_ALL. YOUR. FAULT!”_**

“Éomer!” Éowyn shouts, attempting to prise her brother’s heavy hands from around Gríma’s skinny neck. “Have you gone mad! Let him go!”

“I don’t think so,” her brother snarls. “He wouldn’t have been in that accident if you hadn’t called him in early.” He punctuates each word with a hard shake to the trembling man in his grip.

“That doesn’t give you the right to throttle him!” Éowyn shrieks, looking back at her uncle imploringly. “Uncle! Théoden, please. Stop him!” Her words seem to shake her uncle from his stupor.

“Éomer!” he bellows. “That’s enough. Leave Gríma be.” Éomer glowers but releases the older man who staggers, clutching his throat.

“For my uncle, snake, I will stop,” Éomer says, voice low and choked with loathing. “And for my sister.” With one final glare of hatred he returns to his cousin’s side, Théoden at his heels. Éowyn is left alone in the corridor with the wheezing Gríma. For a long moment the only sound is the beep and whir of machines, the soft sound of Théoden crooning to his unconscious son, and the harshness of the counsellor’s breathing. Until he speaks.

“Thank you,” Gríma gasps, massaging his throat. Livid fingermarks stand out against his pallor. “Miss - I mean, Éowyn. Thank you. For speaking up for me.“ Fury boils up inside her and she whirls, turning to face the counsellor and jabbing a finger into the soft flesh below his collarbone.

“I didn’t do it for you,” she hisses, glaring into Gríma’s pale eyes. The man looks stricken, frozen by her rage like a helpless animal staring into the eyes of the snake. “The last thing my family needs is for Éomer to go to jail on murder charges. As far as I’m concerned, Wormtongue,” she snarls, the slur falling from her lips as easily as breath. “You’re responsible for what happened to my cousin. And I will never. Ever. Forgive you.”

She turns on her heel and walks into Théodred’s hospital room, purposefully closing the door behind her.

It is the last time she will see Gríma for a very long time.


	2. The Awakening

Éowyn is nineteen, and still Théodred lies in unending sleep. Four years since the car accident, since the head injury that left him insensate. The doctors have been telling Théoden for years that he will never recover, and yet Théodred breathes on his own. How can they turn off life support that is not required? They had moved him to a small facility that caters for individuals with acquired brain injuries. He is fed through a tube, washed and changed by strangers and occasionally by Éowyn herself if she happens to be visiting at the right time. The strangeness of bathing and dressing her cousin has long since faded into normalcy.

Before Théodred’s accident, Éowyn had dreamed of joining the Army. Of serving her country in the most fervent way she could dream of. But she has long since abandoned those dreams. What if she were to die in combat? She doubts her uncle could survive the loss of yet another family member. Theodywn and Éomund, Elfhild his beloved wife. And Théodred lying still and silent for four years. No amount of Simbelmynë brought in can cover the antiseptic smell of the astringent used on all surfaces against bacteria and disease, any more than the rift in their family can be healed.

Théoden had thrown himself into work, after. There was a need for him, especially after Gríma had fled. No one had seen him since the day of Théodred’s accident, when he’d cleared out his office at Edoras Enterprises and packed up his apartment, fleeing to parts unknown. Without the steady hand of the counsellor at the helm and the leadership of Théodred, Edoras had been thrown into disarray. Théoden had worked night and day to bring order into chaos, and Éowyn had been by his side for it all. At first fetching and carrying, bringing coffee and lunch on weekends, dropping by for hours after school. And then she began to take notes for him, to listen when he spoke. And by the time end of year holidays came around, she asked if she could become his assistant.

Four years since Théodred’s accident, and Éowyn is living his life over. She works at Edoras as often as she can, often skipping uni tutorials to return to the offices at the very top of Meduseld, the building where the bulk of Edoras resides.

She had chosen nursing as her first career choice. Her uncle had shaken his head and mumbled, “Well, if you’re sure…” And she was. Is. Years of watching patient, gentle people care for Théodred; years of watching vibrant, outspoken individuals raise their voices to ensure the best possible care for their patients. She considers it an honour to someday count herself among their number.

Théodred had been making noise about teaching her to drive, she recalls as she parks her car at Helm’s Deep. He’d been talking about teaching her in his ancient old Fiesta. Old money might be the house of Éorl but Théodred had been far too down to earth to drive around in a flashy car. “Clinker will do me fine,” he’d say, slapping the bonnet affectionately. She’d been eleven the first time he’d taken her for a spin in Clinker.

Clinker had perished in the same accident that had thrust Théodred into his coma. Bent out of shape like a tin can pummelled to a wreck, it had been hard to believe that anyone could walk away from such a crash. Of course, she thinks bitterly, Théodred hadn’t walked away. He couldn’t.

“Good afternoon, Kate,” she tells the clerk on the desk, who looked up with a broad smile.

“Miss Éofer,” she says in delight. “What an unexpected pleasure. We don’t usually see you on Thursdays.”

“I got the afternoon off from uni,” Éowyn informs her, already heading down the hall to Théodred’s room. Kate won’t be offended by her speedy exit. Éowyn is always more chatty after she’s seen her cousin. She hesitates a few steps away from the entrance to his room. She always needs a few moments to collect herself before seeing his pale, still, emaciated figure.

“… volunteered at the animal shelter a few blocks from here. The dogs don’t like me much but the accounts books were a mess. I tidied things up for them and now they want me to do the same for their other sites.” The voice is drawling and heavy, familiar like an old jumper worn soft from too many washings. She knows that voice. Even if she didn’t occasionally hear it in fevered dreams, she remembers.

“Gríma,” she greets him, pausing on the threshold to block the doorway with her form. This is well enough, since her uncle’s former counsellor looks like he wants nothing more to run away.

The years have changed him. He is still pale, his hair still hanging in lank strands, but his lovely tailored suits are gone. In their place he wears an ugly jumper and a pair of ill-fitting jeans. His tongue darts out to lick his lips; his pupils seem dilated in the low-lit room.

“Miss Éofer,” he calls her finally, his sensual voice a harkening to kinder days. “You do not usually visit on this day.”

“You are correct,” she agrees, stepping into the room. Gríma flinches back as though he expects a blow. “My university practical was cancelled. I wanted to see my cousin.” Irrespective of his fear of her, she flits past him to kneel and take her cousin’s limp hand in her own. “Hi, ‘Dred,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “What’s up?”

A low, scornful noise sounds from behind her, and she twists her head around to scowl at him. “I know he can’t hear me,” she informs him icily. “But it makes me feel better. Why do you speak to him, if not to feel at peace?” He is staring at her as though she has hung the stars in the skies.

“How did you know?” he blurts. “That I come here to see him, every Thursday around this time. To speak to him.” She hums a deep, pleased noise in her throat. “How did you know?” he demands again, and she grins.

“You just told me, counsellor.” He jerks as though she has struck him.

“Do not call me that,” he bites out. “Long has it been since anyone sought my counsel.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t run away…” The barb is petty and foolish and even as it lands its mark, stinging beneath the skin, she can feel him draw away from her. She opens a new line of questioning to divert from the current one. “Where did you go? None of us have seen you since…” She trails off into silence.

“Since your brother tried to kill me?” he inquires, tone brittle and liable to snap at any moment. Éowyn flushes all the way down to her chest.

“He was upset,” she defends weakly. Gríma moves towards her suddenly, attempting to use his old trick of looming over her. It startles them both, to discover they are now of a height.

“And was I not?” he demands. “Of course, I am not of the _House of Eorl_.” The last is said with great sarcasm. “Yet I have known Théodred since he took his first steps. Instead of commiseration I was greeted with suspicion, with doubt. And with blame.”

What she wants to do is rail against him, to shriek and bellow. Yet none of that comes out. What she does say is, “What was so important, that morning? That you wanted him to come in to Edoras early?” Gríma gazes at her for a long time.

“I do not recall,” he says finally. “Time has taken the memory from me. What seemed so important then is less than trivial now, but for what it wrought.”

“Uncle misses you,” she tells him quietly. “I do not believe he would turn you away, should you decide to come back to Edoras.” A faint, sad smile tugs at his lips.

“Aye. Perhaps this is the truth. But your brother would not hesitate to kill me.” She scoffs.

“Éomer’s a big pussycat, really.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Would I lead you astray?” With a shock, she realises she is flirting with him. Flirting with Gríma Gálmód, Gríma Wormtongue. Truly, her brother would keel over from a coronary to see her like this. “Besides, Éomer doesn’t even work at Edoras. But I do. I’ll protect you.”

“I have every faith in your powers of protection,” he informs her, a faint smile lingering around the corner of his mouth. But his expression sours quickly. “But I have less faith in whether they will consistently be applied to me. You called me Wormtongue. You shared your brother’s belief in my blame.”

“I did,” she admits, and Gríma flinches. “Will you not forgive me? It was long ago. I was young, and distraught. I did not truly mean it.” Gríma is staring at her again. “WHAT?” she snaps, and her uncle’s former counsellor manages a tiny smile.

“You are as splendid as I always thought you would be,” he says. Uncomfortable under the praise, she shrugs.

“I was practically a child when last we met,” she protests. “And a bratty one at that, I should think.” Gríma’s eyes travel over her form, down the curves that she did not possess four years ago, before flicking back up to meet her eyes. His own are chips of sea ice, even as his cheeks glow with heat.

“You were not so youthful as you might think,” he replies. “Young may the years mark you but you had the strength of a woman, the sharp clear mind of one, and the body too.” Colour suffuses his white face, and she wants to put him at ease.

“You know,” she says teasingly, “there’s a funny story there. Théodred used to say you fancied me, way back then.” She expects a wry laugh, perhaps an agog expression, but she is unprepared for his true reaction. Gríma draws himself up, a regal aura around him in spite of his rather dreadful attire.

“Do not mock me, daughter of Eorl,” he thunders, fury in every line of his pinched, angry face. “I will not tolerate it, not from you.” He sweeps past her to leave, and she is so struck dumb by the unexpectedness of his wrath that she does not try to stop him. “I see you are unchanged,” he bites out. “Beautiful as the false spring that fools all men into believing the long vice of winter is ended, only to freeze the lashes to their cheeks and the blood in their veins. I thought perhaps the years had warmed you.”

With that last parting shot he is gone, leaving her standing with her cousin in a darkening room. She thinks briefly about going after him, except she genuinely doesn’t know what she’s done wrong. And yet…

_Beautiful as the false spring…_

_You are as splendid as I always thought you would be…_

The gentleness in his touch, that day long ago, and his silent support.

She should have known, really. In matters of the heart she has always been utterly oblivious. Théodred knew, though. Did everybody?

And now, she _really_ has no idea what to do. She sits down in the chair beside the bed, dropping her head into her hands. “What am I going to do now, ‘Dred?” she asks.

“Fucked if I know,” a voice rasps, and for a moment she is certain she has imagined it. Yet when she takes her hands away, Théodred’s eyes are open, moving all over the room, until they fix on Éowyn’s own.

“You’re awake,” she murmurs in mingled shock and awe. “Bloody hell. Jesus Christ, you’re awake.”

Théodred coughs, attempting to shrug his much shrunken shoulders. “Of course I’m awake,” he tells her, like she’s being an idiot. “I’d know that bloody bellowing voice anywhere,” he croaks. “How am I supposed to sleep through that racket?“

And Éowyn laughs even as the tears pour down her face.

_x_

Théodred’s doctors say it’s a medical impossibility, that irate shouting could have woken Théodred from his coma. Éowyn, after all the medical study she’s done (both as part of her degree and as personal research after Théodred’s accident) agrees. And yet the timing is too precise, too perfect.

Théodred himself, despite that momentary flicker of recognition at the sound of the counsellor’s shriek of rage, does not seem to remember. So when Théoden arrives with Éomer and Doctor Aragorn in tow, there is thankfully no need to mention Gríma at all.

Ah, Théoden. At the sight of his son awake and blinking in the light, he had fell to the floor as though struck with a blow. Théodred had tried to sit up, to stand, to check on his father, but his muscles were too atrophied from four years of inactivity. Instead Éomer had pulled their uncle to his feet, and Théoden had touched his son’s face, whispered his name. “My beautiful boy,” he’d sobbed, resting his head on his son’s chest, Théodred managing to raise a wasted hand to touch his father’s shoulder. “I always knew you’d come back to me.”

“Dad,” his son has murmured in reply. “How long has it been?”

When they tell him, Théodred swears so loudly and violently that even sober Doctor Aragorn manages a smile. “Four years?” he echoes. “Fucking hell.”

Éomer manages a laugh that is more like a sob. “You prick,” he calls his cousin. Théodred yawns loudly.

“Whatever,” he says. “Can I go home now?”

_x_

After two weeks of intensive physiotherapy, Théodred moves back in with his dad, and at long last Éowyn cleans out her cousin’s room. Oh, she doesn’t throw anything away, but the bedroom had been left as a silent monument to Théodred as though to change a thing would be to admit he might die. The apartment is much changed now that she lives there alone. When her brother and cousin had lived there, the flat had seemed to exist in a constant state of chaos. Dishes piled up, boots and sneakers tangled by the door. A horrendous pile of weird smelling clothes by the washing machine as though they’d somehow magically climb into the machine and wash themselves. Boys.

These days, the flat is clean. But cold, sterile. She gets terribly lonely sometimes, considering Éomer lives with his girlfriend.

She has more important things to do, though, than ruminate on the past.

She has a counsellor to find.

Her first visit to the shelter earns her no joy. Neither do the others. She finally gets lucky a full week after her first visit to the small shelter, the only one within the few blocks that Gríma had mentioned. “I’m looking for Gríma Gálmód,” she tells the receptionist, and knows she’s hit the mark from the tiny, barely visible expression of distaste on the girl’s face. There is just something about Gríma that inspires distrust and even fear. At Edoras new interns had lived in terror of the slight man striding around the halls and corridors of Meduseld. His biting voice could be heard from two floors away; she’d been visiting Théodred one day when she was fourteen, only to hear the counsellor berate his secretary to the point of tears. “Prick,” Théodred had seethed.

Éowyn is led down a long corridor that smells faintly of dog food. “He’s in there,” the receptionist says, pointing to a beige door at the very end. “On your own head for disturbing him, though.”

“It’s all right,” Éowyn assures her. “I’m used to him.” The receptionist shudders.

“You poor thing,” the girl says, heading back to her desk and leaving Éowyn with a faint sensation of annoyance. Gríma isn’t that bad.

She knocks crisply. “Come in!” barks the man inside, identically to the way he had so many years ago at Edoras. As though he was king of the world and his time was pure gold.

Pushing open the door, for a moment she is diverted from Gríma by his surroundings. A small desk and chair in a windowless room full of shelves and filing cabinets and paper, so much paper. She compares it to the office he’d had at Meduseld; a massive desk of dark wood, ergonomically designed chair and huge windows to let in the light. Top of the range computer and printer; this office didn’t even had a laptop, for God’s sake.

In the middle of all of this is Gríma, eyes wide and lips parted a little in surprise. Éowyn notes with sadness his worn coat and the jeans with the neat patch over the knee. For some reason, that little mended spot brings a lump to her throat. She has no doubt he’d stitched it himself.

“Hello, counsellor,” she says, and Gríma’s lips flatten into a thin line, eyes glittering.

“How did you find me?” he asks, shrinking in on himself. Éowyn shrugs, closing his door and leaning against his desk. He moves away from her, pushing away from his desk and towards a corner.

“You were talking to Théodred about an animal shelter. This is the only one within ten kilometres. I’ve been here four times already looking for you.” He smiles, a mirthless quirk of the lips she remembers from long ago.

“Looking for me? And why would that be, Miss Éofer? Not content with mocking me, you come to finish the job?” Irked already, she nudges him sharply with a toe.

“Shut up,” she retorts. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Typical,” he sneers. “Entitled little princess is peeved that someone will not do as she says. You are so like your brother.”

“That’s not what you said a matter of weeks ago,” she bites, and he smirks.

“I was misinformed,” he retorts. “Forgive a man for hope, my dear girl.” Despite the endearment, he did not mean it kindly. Éowyn’s patience runs out. Thirty seconds, she notes distantly. I think that’s a new record.

“Look,” she says, her voice tight with anger. “I don’t give a good goddamn whether you fancied the boss man’s niece almost five years ago. Whatever. But I’m going to wait right here until you’ve finished your work, and then you’re coming with me to see Théoden and Théodred. No arguments, no trying to bargain or talk your way out. I have mace and I know how to use it, and if I have to tie you up with my scarf and drag you kicking and screaming, then I will.”

The fight goes out of him, and he tips his head back in his chair, rubbing at his eyes. “I cannot.”

“Of course you can,” she snaps. “You know that Théodred’s awake, right?” she asks. Surely he cannot be that ill-informed.

“I know,” he replies, his voice changed. The harshness is gone, replaced by the old silkiness. “Four years of that boy’s life gone, because of me.” Reckless in the face of his sudden sorrow, she reaches out and catches his hand in her own. Gríma looks down at their tangled fingers as though doubting the sight is true. She squeezes them for emphasis and he swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing.

He has fine dark hair starting on his wrists. Funny how she’d never noticed that before.

“Those years may be gone, but Théodred is most decidedly not,” she says firmly. “Come on, Mr Gálmód. Time to be brave.”

_x_

“Only me,” she calls as she lets herself into her uncle’s house. Théoden is sitting at the dining room table, boots on the wood as he studies a vast pile of paperwork from Edoras. He looks up and a broad smile creases his still-handsome face.

“Éowyn!” he says in delight. Having Théodred back has changed Théoden. It is rather like, Éowyn thinks, he is a man coming back to life.

“Uncle,” she replies warmly, hugging him tight. “I bought you a gift,” she says to Théodred, sitting on the sofa in the living room attached to the kitchen and dining room. She tosses him his bag of art supplies, waiting for the gasp.

“Éowyn!” echoes her cousin, voice much like his father’s. He jumps to his feet and embraces her; for a moment, it is like the last five years have just been a horrible dream.

“Thought you might like them back,” she says softly as her cousin lets her go, digging joyously into his supplies. “And, Uncle.” Théoden, newly returned to his seat, looks up from his paperwork. “I brought a gift for you too.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Théoden tells her, but his eyes light up in curiosity as he follows her down the hall

“It’s not really a thing,” she says, opening the front door. “It’s more of a person.”

She thought Gríma night have done a runner, but there he is. It appears he is taking her order to be brave to the heart. The former counsellor leans against the porch, hair flopping into his eyes, and Théoden pauses as if stunned by a blow. For a long moment there is only silence but for the cars in the street.

“Where the hell have you been?” Théoden demands, voice taut with rage. Éowyn pales. This is not going the way she expected it to. “You bastard. I had to lose not only my son, but you as well?”

Gríma is crimson, eyes on his boots. “I’m sorry, sir,” he mumbles, and Théoden reaches out to grab him hard by the shoulders.

“Uncle!”

“Sir?” Théoden shouts, spittle flying. “Curse it, Gríma, you were my friend. My best friend! The closest thing I had to a brother! I should have made you partner in Edoras years before Théodred’s accident!” Apparently overcome, Théoden opens and closes his mouth a few times, before deciding actions are preferable to words.

“Oof!” poor Gríma grunts as Théoden grabs him in a bear hug. Éowyn feels herself smiling, a foolish great big grin that no doubt makes her look as stupid as hell.

“Idiot,” Théoden growls. “Bloody fool.” He sets Gríma back down on the ground. “Come in and have a coffee.”

_x_

“Why did you do all of this?” Gríma asks her later, seated beside her at the dining room table. Théodred is stretched out asleep on the sofa and Théoden is off at Edoras; he’d taken a call and said he had to go. Gríma’s head had jerked up and he’d looked at Théoden hopefully as if to ask to come too. Éowyn knew why. Edoras Enterprises had been Gríma’s baby as much as it had been Théoden’s; he must have missed his work desperately. He’d been damn good at it.

“Because I love my family,” Éowyn replies. “And Uncle has missed you very much.”

“I noticed,” Gríma says dryly. He looks down, and there is a catch in his voice a moment later: “I missed him too.” Uncomfortable with the silent gratitude in his piercing eyes, Éowyn brushes her hair back from her face and tries to ignore the way the counsellor’s eyes follow her every move.

“Good,” she says briskly. “You’re back now and everything can go back to normal.” One moment Gríma is at arm’s length, and the next moment his elegant hand is light on her arm.

“I do not have your capacity for such optimism, Miss Éofer,” he says softly. “I fear I have misjudged you.”

She smiles in spite of herself. “I assume you’re referring to ‘entitled little princess’ comment?” Gríma winces, but his hand does not leave her arm.

“Amongst others,” he admits. “I do not deserve your forgiveness.”

“You haven’t asked for it yet,” she points out, and is rewarded with a glare. She pacifies him with a hand on top of his, and he stills at once.

“Will you forgive me, Miss Éofer?” he rasps, and Éowyn pretends to think.

“On one condition,” she says lightly. “Call me Éowyn, for God’s sake.” His breath catches.

“If you wish,” he says. “ _Éowyn_.” He speaks her name as though it is a sweetness on his tongue. Éowyn feels strangely at sea.

“Well done,” she says, brusque to hide her confusion. “You pass with flying colours.” She shifts her arm and his hand falls away; it is as though the world starts turning again.

“Where’s Dad?” Théodred asks, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. _Perfect timing, Théodred._

“Work,” Éowyn replies, eyeing her cousin as he wanders a trifle stiffly into the kitchen. “I’ll have a cup of tea, if you’re getting one.” Théodred whirls.

“I was in a coma!” he says indignantly. “You can’t force me into servitude! I’m recovering!”

“Get over yourself,” she tells him, and his outraged façade only lasts another moment before it crumbles and he grins.

“No respect in the young these days,” he chides, setting the mugs on the counter. “Want one, Gríma?” The counsellor nods mutely.

Éowyn likes the new Théodred. With his old biting humour and dry wit, yet with a new kindness about him, a patience. She’d half feared that Théodred would still feel his old animosity towards Gríma, but it appears to have faded. “Being in a coma for four years teaches you a thing or two about what really counts,” he’d said when she asked. “Besides, the nursing staff at Helm’s Deep told me that the bastard was there every week to see me.”

“So?” she’d queried. Théodred had smiled down at her.

“You’ll understand someday, little cousin,” he’d replied, and she’d punched him for calling him little.

God, but it was good to have him back.

The door slams, and heavy footsteps come down the hall. “Is that you, Dad?” Théodred calls.

“Aye,” Théoden rumbles, dropping a stack of paperwork onto the table. Éowyn picks up the top sheet absentmindedly, only to drop it in astonishment.

“Uncle?” she questions. “Is this what I think it is?” Théoden settles his bulk into a chair across from Gríma.

“That would entirely depend, niece, on what you think it is.” He slides a sheaf of paper over to his former counsellor.

“It looks like…” Gríma says slowly. “But it cannot be.”

“But it is,” Théoden replies. “Old friend. Come back.”

And just like that, Éowyn marvels, Gríma Gálmód returns to Edoras.


	3. The Articulation

Éowyn offers to pick Gríma up for his first day back, when she discovers he doesn’t have a car. “Not necessary, Éowyn,” he tells her firmly.

“Shut up,” she replies, and he scowls.

“When did you become so rude?” he wonders. “The girl I knew was so polite.” Théodred laughs from his seat across the room.

“I don’t know who you’re remembering, but she was never polite to me.”

“That’s because you’re a dick,” Éowyn replies, glowering at her cousin. Gríma stares down at his paperwork, his lips twitching. “It’s not negotiable,” she informs the older man. “I have a car. You don’t. We both have to be at Edoras for eight thirty on Monday morning. It’s convenient. Save the environment, Gríma. Now write down your address and stop dithering.”

“Don’t argue with her,” Théodred chortles into his mug. “She always wins.”

_Wake up, you stupid idiot! WAKE UP! I swear to God, Théodred, if you don’t wake up this very second I’ll -_

She pushes the memory away.

And so that is how she finds herself pulling up outside an apartment block some twenty minutes away from her own flat. It’s ten to eight, they have ages to get to Edoras, and she honks the horn loudly. Scarcely a minute later, a slight figure comes hurrying out of the front door, wrapped in a heavy black coat.

“Morning,” Éowyn grunts as Gríma slides into her car. She has never been much of a morning person.

“The same to you,” he replies warily. She takes stock of his changed appearance. Beneath his thick (if battered) coat he is once more dressed in one of his lovely suits, even if he is somewhat thinner now than he was before. His hair is still long but clean and swept back from his face. There is nothing to be done about his pallor. He has always been the same in that respect.

“You look good,” she informs him, guiding the car out of the car park. “Are you nervous?”

“Hardly,” he sniffs. “To use the colloquialism, this is not my first time at the rodeo, Miss Éofer.”

“Éowyn,” she corrects absently, focussing on the road.

“That will take some getting used to,” he says wryly. “You, ah. You too look well this morning, Éowyn.” The compliment falls awkward and unpractised from his tongue, and to her surprise she values it more than for its graceless nature.

“Thank you,” she says, pausing at a red light and glancing down at her fitted shirt and skirt, her jacket lying abandoned in the back seat. “I find working at Edoras easier if I look the part. Although,” she realises, “I may not be needed anymore, now that you are returning.” She is surprised to find the prospect is not as unwelcome as she might have thought. Gríma, however, looks horrified.

“I cannot put you out of your job,” he says, his face flushing. “That is unthinkable.” Thoughtlessly, Éowyn reaches over and pats his arm, feeling him turn to stone beneath her touch. Quickly, she removes her hand, talking to cover the moment of strangeness.

“To tell you the truth,” she replies, Meduseld looming up ahead. “I would welcome it. Edoras will always be dear to me but it would be nice to focus on my degree for a change.” There is silence as she negotiates her way into the car park.

“I did not know you studied,” the counsellor remarks finally .

“I’m in my second year of nursing,” she says, parking neatly and turning the ignition. “I have placements coming up soon. I would like to do well.” She turns to him. “We’re here,” she says rather unnecessarily.

“I did not think nursing would be to your taste,” Gríma says carefully. “Did you not speak of joining the armed forces?” She sighs, for a moment wishing for those easier days before Théodred’s accident.

“A child’s dreams,” she says lightly. “A teenager’s dreams. Not mine, anymore.” She smiles to ease the sudden tension. “Enough, Mr Gálmód,” she says teasingly. “No more delay. Welcome back.”

_x_

“WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD -”

“He’s baaa-ack,” Théodred sings to himself, chortling into his latte. He’s perched on Éowyn’s desk as three offices away, Gríma vents his frustrations.

“Why are you even here?” Éowyn asked her cousin from her swivel chair. “You’re making it impossible for me to focus.”

“To watch the fireworks,” Théodred replies.

“You’re not even watching, you’re just eavesdropping like a -”

“IS NO ONE IN THIS WRETCHED BUILDING COMPETENT?”

“I’m never going to get anything done, am I?” Éowyn asks rhetorically, throwing down her pen in resignation and beginning to spin. If you can’t beat them…

“You might as well face it, cousin,” Théodred informs her. “Gríma’s presence here makes you completely superfluous. And Dad, for that matter.”

“HAS A MONKEY BEEN DOING THE BOOKS FOR THE LAST FOUR YEARS?”

“Let’s go and get him a coffee,” Éowyn reasons, slipping her heels back on and getting to her feet. “It might appease him.” She scoops up her purse. “Are you coming?”

“Hell no.”

“Coward,” she says lightly. Théodred grins and takes her place in the swivel chair.

“I freely admit it. You’re infinitely braver than me,” he replies. “Bearding the dragon in his den. Do you even know how he takes his coffee?”

Éowyn pauses. “Oh, shit.”

_x_

She balances a tray of takeaway coffees and a paper bag full of baked goods as she tentatively pushes open the door to the counsellor’s office. The office had been in disuse for the last four years during Gríma’s absence. Nothing had been disturbed, the beautiful desk and computer slowly gathering dust, the blinds closed on the lovely view of the city and surrounding grasslands.

All is changed now Gríma has returned. The blinds have been pulled open, light spilling in, and the dust has been banished by Edoras’ cleaning staff. The desk, so long abandoned, is covered with papers, books, folders, and an iPad. And Gríma is in the thick of it all, incensed and still occasionally snapping out biting comments and critiques. But he is alone in the office. It seems she is the only one brave enough, and he is yet to notice her presence.

“ - have no idea _what_ they’ve been doing - ” Pointedly, she slams the door behind her, and the counsellor’s head jerks up. She bites back a smile at the sight of him. Spots of colour are high on Gríma’s cheeks, and he is breathing hard as though he’s run a marathon. “Éowyn!” he says in surprise.

“Mr Gálmód,” she replies warily. “I come bearing gifts. No need to stab me with your pen.” Gríma looks down at the offending implement still clenched in his hand as though he has no idea how it got there. Haltingly, he lowers his fist.

“Not you,” he says. “Perhaps the idiot who’s been managing Edoras Enterprises in my absence -”

“That would still be me,” she retorts coolly. “And Uncle, occasionally Éomer when he can tear himself away from Lothíriel, and whoever else we had to call upon to fill the void created when you did a runner.”

“All of you?” he asks in disbelief, his anger seemingly put on the back burner for now. “But that would cost a fortune! Why so many? I managed all of this with only the help of my _ridiculously_ incompetent secretary!” Fire flares in her blood. She doesn’t know why this man can rile her up like no other. Four years ago, she would have considered this unusual violence around him as simple dislike. But she is wiser now, and she can see it as a symptom of a wider problem.

“What you could accomplish in forty hours a week, Gríma, takes the rest of us mere mortals at least twice that,” she snaps finally.

“Evidently,” he snarls, but she talks over him.

“I’m not finished! Uncle was a mess and I knew nothing about running a company! What did you expect to happen? You were everything to Edoras: CEO, manager, accountant, HR… Just because you’re freakishly exceptional doesn’t mean the rest of us didn’t do our bloody best!” Gríma’s lips are a white line. Sighing, he waves an elegant hand at the tray she’s still clutching.

“What have you got there?” he asks in resignation, as though he knows he’ll never win an argument with her.

“Coffee, although I bloody well wish I hadn’t bothered now,” she mutters rebelliously. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I brought a bit of everything. There’s a cappuccino, short black, hot chocolate, or Earl Grey if you swing in that direction. Sugar, extra milk, and I got a blueberry Danish or a chocolate scone. You can have whichever.”

He’s giving her the strangest look. “What?” she snaps in irritation, and he shakes his head.

“Nothing, Éowyn,” he murmurs, picking up the cup of Earl Grey and holding it between his palms. “This was very thoughtful of you. Thank you. I didn’t expect -” But whatever he is about to say seems to get stuck in his throat, and he falls silent.

“Well,” Éowyn says, uncomfortable with his quiet gratitude. “Not like anyone could get any work done with you bellowing like a wounded beast.” A wry smile breaks over his pale face.

“And you thought you’d soothe me with carbohydrates?” he asked, sitting down and taking a bite of the chocolate scone. A beatific expression comes over his face. “That’s rather splendid,” he admits, taking another bite and stirring milk into his tea.

“As if I’d get you the dodgy stuff,” Éowyn sniffs, looking around for a second chair. There is none, she realises. There’s only ever been one chair in Gríma’s office, as though no one can bear to spend too long in his company. How dreadfully sad.

She clears a space on the desk, reaching for the hot chocolate and the Danish. “If you spill that on my papers,” he threatens lightly.

“You’ll what?” she asks, grinning. “Punish me? I’d like to see you try.” Gríma flushes a lovely scarlet and almost chokes on his tea.

“Of course not - that is to say -” Éowyn pounds him on the back.

“Oh, chill out,” she says dryly. “Although technically you are my boss now.” Gríma sips his tea and smiles up at her. It’s the warmest expression she’s ever seen on his pale face, almost a grin, an expression of unabashed delight. There’s a smudge of chocolate on his upper lip. His joy takes ten years and untold cares off of him, and something harsh tightens her throat.

“So I am,” he says. “Maybe I could -”

Whatever else he is going to say is lost, because she kisses him.

Kisses him hard and sweet, his lips still shaping words for a moment before he goes completely still. His lips are unmoving, and it stirs a frustration in her chest; she licks at that smear of chocolate and as though automatically his lips part. She slides her tongue in his mouth, tastes chocolate and tea, and Gríma makes a tiny noise deep in his throat, shivers under her touch. Éowyn threads her fingers through his and brings his hand up to her cheek, her face. “Please,” she whispers, as though to speak any louder would break a spell.

It seems to do the trick. His hand goes to the nape of her neck and he kisses her back, deep and hungry, as though trying to inhale the essence of her. He kisses well, sweet and searching, his hand threading into the golden waves of her loose hair. His tongue, so maligned but so talented now, and she lets herself fall into the sensation. Who gives a shit who he is, that he’s twenty years her senior, and -

Fucking hell she’s kissing Gríma Gálmód, and oh God what would Éomer say -

She pulls back sharply, her breathing harsh in the silent office. “Fuck,” she murmurs.

The counsellor is staring up at her, clear eyes huge in his ashen face. He raises one hand to his lips, red and full from the ferocity of her kiss. “If you insist,” he replies, voice deeper and far more unsteady than usual. “Éowyn -”

“I’m sorry,” she says, grabbing her purse from where it lies abandoned by the takeaway tray. “God. Shit. I’m sorry, Gríma. I can’t.”

She’s brave. She’s aware of it. But she’s not afraid to admit that this time, she runs away like a coward.

_x_

Éowyn runs into Théoden just outside Gríma’s office. Her breathing is still uneven, her pulse racing; her underwear are uncomfortably damp and this is so not the state she wants her uncle to see her in. She gives him a distracted smile and makes to bolt down the hall.

Her uncle pauses in the corridor just as she‘s about to scuttle past. “Éowyn -” Something about his tone is vaguely alarming, as is the expression of abject seriousness. “Can you spare a minute?” Éowyn swallows.

“Uncle, I’ve got to get somewhere,” she says, casting a wild glance back at Gríma’s closed door. Get away from somewhere, more like. “Can we make this quick?”

“It’s not really something I want to discuss on the corridor,” Théoden says grimly. “Hell. Since Gríma’s back, little niece, I don’t really - that is…” He trails off into helpless silence, but she knows what he’s getting at.

“You don’t need me here anymore,” she says, and confirmation comes in her uncle’s expression of mingled relief and consternation.

“Yes,” he replies. “I’ll always be grateful for your help, Éowyn, but now that Gríma’s back for good - you‘re not angry, are you?” he asks anxiously, peering down at her.

Éowyn, almost speechless with relief, flings her arms around him. “Thank you, Uncle,” she says breathlessly, pecking Théoden on the cheek. “Perfect timing.” And she sprints off down the hall, leaving her uncle utterly bewildered.


	4. The Answer

Éowyn gets back to her degree and does not miss Edoras Enterprises at all, thank you very much. Except for now she has to look for a new job, otherwise her landlord is liable to get rather testy when she can’t pay the rent.

Quite by accident, she stumbles across a job as a personal carer at a nursing home ten minutes away from the flat. Her new employers happen to be rather desperate for new staff, meaning she gets more shifts than she needs. Anything, though, to fill the hours she might have spent at her uncle’s house, where Gríma Gálmód might be visiting.

She still doesn’t know what possessed her to kiss her uncle’s counsellor. Or rather, she’s perfectly aware of what led her to kiss him. His broad grin, his eyes like chips of sea ice glinting up at her, settled in the environment he so loves and should never have left.

Worse was her own reaction to it. It’s not like she’s a blushing virgin who thinks kissing a man is the height of erotic exploration. She’d lost her v-card to Kili while he and Tauriel had been on a ‘break’ back in high school. Needless to say the break hadn’t lasted, but she hadn’t cared. All she’d wanted was to get it over with, to feel something other than the creeping numbness that had plagued her all throughout high school after Théodred’s accident. It had been fumbling and awkward, even if Kee had been marginally more experienced than her.

And then one of Éomer’s mates (not that she’d ever tell her brother about that) and a guy in her degree and that had been enough sexual exploration for her. She’d worked out as a teenager how to get herself off, and no one else ever came close.

Until Gríma Gálmód had kissed her like he knew every half imagined fantasy, every momentary desire. Maybe it was just a natural conclusion of kissing someone with twenty years’ experience on her, or perhaps the fact that were her family to discover her momentary lapse, her brother would probably try to kill Gríma again. The forbidden nature of it all… yes, that was it. What else could it be? she asked herself.

_x_

“Where the fuck have you been?” Théodred asks her when she calls him on her lunch break. “I’ve left you like a hundred messages.”

“Eight,” she corrects.

“Whatever,” her cousin says. “Come round for dinner after work,” he invites. “Dad’s cooking.”

“Your dad can’t cook,” she replies in exasperation. “It’ll be pizza or Chinese from the place down the street from yours, mark my words.”

“And this is a bad thing?” Théodred questions. “I’d rather pizza than Dad’s attempt at lasagne again. I’m pretty sure being in a coma was worse than that.”

“Stop joking about it,” she says weakly, pressing a cool hand to her throbbing temples. It helps, a little. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s my coma, I can make all the jokes I want. See you around three-thirty.” Théodred hangs up, and Éowyn glares at her phone.

“I didn’t even say yes,” she mumbles, prodding her limp salad with disinterest. Pizza or Chinese starting to look real good about now, she considers wryly. If only not for Gríma -

After her shift finishes, she trudges out to her car and contemplates just sleeping right there in the driver’s seat. Longingly, she considers the sofa at her uncle’s place. Man up, she tells herself. It’s three pm on a Wednesday. Gríma would be at Edoras. She could spend a couple hours with Théodred and be gone before Gríma even left his office. And so fucking what if she runs into him. She’s a grown woman. She can handle it.

Théodred answers the front door. “Good girl,” he says approvingly, as though he’s twenty yearss older than her, rather than five. “Come on in.”

She sinks into the familiar cycle of banter with Théodred. It takes her cousin only a few moments to realise she’s in pain, and she thanks him when he hands her two paracetamol and a glass of water. “Get some rest, Dad’ll be home soon,” he encourages. And she closes her eyes.

Slowly, drifting somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, she forgets the weeks of confusion and working herself into the ground to forget the press of Gríma’s lips on hers. Théoden comes home around six with enough Chinese takeaway to feed a small army, and she gives Théodred a knowing smile. In response, her cousin winks and puts on one of the Harry Potter movies. Éowyn eats and curls up on the sofa, fully intending to jump in her car and leave. Just after she closes her eyes…

“You should have woke me up,” she snarks at Théodred when she wakes around nine. “I have stuff to do.”

“You looked like hell,” he informs her. “Still do, as a matter of fact. For Christ’s sake, I’m the one who got out of a coma, but you’re the one who looks half dead.”

“You’re so sweet,” she growls, limping into the kitchen. One of her colleagues had run over her foot with the mechanical lifter that afternoon. Her head hurts and she feels feverish and sweaty from sleeping fully clothed, her body aches down to her very bones -

And Gríma Gálmód is glaring at her from her uncle’s dining table.

“You,” she says lamely. From his seat beside his counsellor, Théoden frowned.

“That’s hardly polite, Éowyn,” he reproves. Éowyn represses a groan. She’s so not in the mood.

“Sorry, Uncle,” she says wearily, crossing the room to rustle through a cabinet for more painkillers. “I’m a horrible bitch. Happy?”

“I didn’t say that,” Théoden retorts with some heat. “What’s got into you?” She swallows the Panadol dry with a grimace.

“Bad day,” she replies, and Gríma’s scowl deepens. “Sorry, Uncle. Sorry, Mr Gálmód.”

Théoden, mollified, comes round to kiss her forehead and give her a brief hug. “I’m going to bed,” he says. “Let yourself out, Gríma.” Out of the corner of her eye she sees the counsellor nod. Théoden leaves them alone in the kitchen.

For a long time nobody speaks. Éowyn closes her eyes and waits for the waves of pain to slowly recede. When she opens them, Gríma is still there, now staring fixedly down at the table. Éowyn sighs.

“Did you just get here?” she asks, seeing the leftover containers strewn around him. He gives a jerky nod, not meeting her eyes. “It’s so late,” she says, eyeing the clock. It’s closer to ten, really. “What were you doing at the office so late?”

“None of your concern,” he clips out, and wow, he’s mad. “You no longer work for Edoras, Miss Éofer.”

“You should take better care of yourself,” she informs him, noting the dark smudges beneath his eyes, the way his skin is drawn tight over his cheekbones, making them starker than ever.

“Again,” he says, low enough to be a murmur, really. But his voice loses none of it’s deadliness.  
“None. Of. Your. Concern. Miss Éofer,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. Éowyn thinks about arguing, and decides against it.

“Back to that?” she asks tiredly instead. “I’m not in the fucking mood, Gríma. Good night.” She turns away.

A loud crash echoes through the kitchen and startled, she turns back to him. He has stood with such violence his chair has shot back and crashed into the breakfast bar. Gríma’s fists are clenched by his sides and his jaw is set so harshly she can almost hear teeth grinding. “You’re not in the _fucking_ mood?” he enunciates, and through the dim haze of exhaustion and pain she registers how hot it is to hear him swear. “You’re not. You kissed me, you foolish girl, don’t you understand what you’ve done? Years! Years of pushing it down, forcing it back, thinking you’d never care for me! I was almost there! Almost immune to your beauty and your brains and that wicked grin, and you ruin it in one moment!”

The torrent of words burst out of him as though a dam has been broken. His chest heaving, eyes bright almost to the point of tears, and something breaks in her as though it never was. “I didn’t know,” she begins softly, and Gríma laughs darkly.

“Of course you did,” he sneers. “Everyone knows, for God‘s sake. It‘s Edoras‘ worst kept secret.”

“I knew you thought I was pretty!” she replies sharply. “Not that you loved me, you idiot!”

“Well, now you know,” he says savagely, spreading his arms wide. “I love you, Éowyn, I’ve always loved you. Are you happy now?”

“No,” she whispers, and Gríma’s face twists into an ugly grin. More like a leer, really, of fury and rage and love twisted into something too dark to recognise.

“Go home, Miss Éofer,” he snaps, voice clipped and barely restrained. His lovely hands work in and out of fists at his sides, as though his body alone cannot contain his rage. “Go home, and so will I. I don’t believe you and I have anything left to say to one another.”

“For Christ’s sake,” she snaps, and strides across the room to him. She grabs his lapels in her fists. “Just stop talking.” Gríma opens his mouth regardless, and she kisses him to shut him up. Gríma doesn’t freeze this time. Instead he wraps her in his arms, so tight she can barely draw breath, and kisses her with the fervency of a drowning man.

“Darling, darling,” he murmurs when she pulls away to ghost kisses over his brow, his eyelids, his cheeks. “Stop. I can’t go through losing you again.”

“You won’t have to,” she promises, and her lips find his.

“Are you going to run away again?” he asks, moments and forever later when she pulls back to breathe. Éowyn scowls at him.

“I didn’t run away,” she defends, the usual anger rising easily to the surface. “I just -”

“Turned tail and ran?” Gríma supplies. Her scowl deepens. In contrast, the counsellor’s face is open and easy, and he pulls her back into his arms. Her chin comes to rest on his shoulder, and she surrenders into his embrace.

“Shut up,” she says, but there’s no real heat in it. Gríma laughs, his cheek resting on the loose waves on her hair.

“What a strange way to say I love you,” he says. “You are an odd girl.”

“Are you saying you’d have me any other way?” she asks, turning her face up to his.

“No,” he murmurs, and for a long time there are no words. Until -

“Jesus CHRIST!” Théodred bellows from the doorway, dropping his mug. It shatters into a thousand pieces and Éowyn and Gríma leap away from one another as though electrocuted. “Gríma? Éowyn? What the -”

“Surprise?” she asks weakly, threading her hand through the counsellor’s. Théodred pales, sinking into a chair.

“You. And him? Fuck.” Théodred appears about to say more, but his father interrupts. Théoden bursts in, shirtless and with a baseball bat in one hand.

“What is it?” he shouts. His eyes travel to his counsellor and his niece, and he lowers the bat. “Oh,” Théoden says from the exact spot Théodred had just vacated. “About bloody time.”

Théodred chokes. “You’re all going to put me in another fucking coma,” Éowyn’s cousin gripes, and for once Théoden doesn’t criticise his son’s swearing.

“Don’t be such a drama queen,” Éowyn says wearily, leaning back against Gríma for support. Her eyes drift closed for a moment, but pop open in astonishment as her uncle’s comment registers in her brain. “ABOUT TIME?”

“Who’s going to tell Éomer?” Théodred asks no one in particular, and Éowyn groans.

This is her life. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.


	5. The Absolute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A thing happens. (The thing is sex.)

“Let me get this straight,” Éomer rasps. One hand is clenched into a fist and the other has Lothíriel’s in a death grip. “Uncle, you’re all right with this?”

“Gríma is a good man,” Théoden replies serenely. Éomer makes a soft scornful noise deep in his throat.

“You may believe that, Uncle,” he says, sounding extremely doubtful, “but I do not. Casting aside everything else, Gríma is twenty years older than Éowyn. And –”

“Enough,” Éowyn snaps, rising to her feet. The five of them are sitting around her uncle’s dining room table. Delicate Lothíriel, calm Théoden, amused Théodred, furious Éomer, and Éowyn herself. Gríma had not been invited to this little parlay amongst the House of Eorl. Nor had Lothíriel, Éowyn muses, yet she has ever been a calming influence on Éowyn’s hot-tempered older brother. Éowyn had not protested when Lothíriel had arrived hand in hand with her brother, separating from him only to give Éowyn a quick, sisterly, sympathetic hug.

Éowyn is acutely aware of the way all eyes are on her. She does not like it overmuch, even here amongst her own kin. “Enough, Éomer,” she repeats. “I’m old enough and daft enough to make my own decisions. You are my brother. You are not my father, and this is not the Middle Ages when you could make my decisions for me. That is the end of the discussion.”

“You must allow your sister to choose her own path,” Lothíriel says in her soft, gentle voice, turning her lovely face up to Éomer. “Whether she and Mr Gálmód can create something lasting together or not, it is no longer your responsibility to decide Éowyn’s fate.” Éowyn chances a look at her older brother. His face is still brick red, but it is fading. Rather than furious, he merely looks miserable, his hands falling slack to his sides.

“But I love you,” he says helplessly. “You’re my little sister. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Whether I do or whether I don’t, Éomer,” Éowyn replies firmly, “you cannot protect me from everything.” Éomer nods, his gaze firmly on his feet, but he does not speak.

It is the quietest Éowyn has seen her brother in a very long time.

 

“So, what is the verdict?” Gríma asks, voice tinny through the mobile phone. Éowyn does not comment on the vein of uncertainty threading through his voice. It has only been a handful of days since she had seen him again at her uncle’s house, when he had called her out on her cowardice. And in all honesty, she has barely seen him since then. He has been busy with Edoras, she with university and work. All that has passed between them since that night had been the daily phone calls, and Éowyn was growing weary of it. Still, she thinks with a thrum of satisfaction, not for long. “Should I be expecting your brother to arrive on my doorstep wielding a sword and a pike to impale my head upon?” Éowyn laughs.

“Don’t be silly,” she replies as she gets out of her car, regarding the apartment building in front of her with something like trepidation. She really hopes she remembers which one is his. “Éomer hasn’t fenced since high school.”

“Hmm.” Gríma sounds dubious. Éowyn changes the subject.

“What are you up to?” she asks. Gríma huffs.

“I am ‘up to nothing’, daughter of Eorl. If you are asking if I am currently engaged in an activity, the answer is no. Why do you ask?” Éowyn can’t hide the amusement in her voice as she finishes climbing the stairs and steps onto the landing of the top floor.

“No reason,” she says, and rings the doorbell. She hangs up the phone, and a moment later hears footsteps approaching the door. Éowyn feels her lips stretch into a smile as Gríma opens the door. Hair tousled, wearing just his suit trousers and his shirt rolled up to his elbows, his feet bare; Éowyn loves him a little more for his vulnerability.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Gríma asks in astonishment, but to Éowyn’s curiosity, does not step aside to allow her into his apartment. “Éowyn. It’s almost eleven o clock at night.” Éowyn shrugs.

“I wanted to see you,” she replies, and Gríma’s face softens. “Aren’t you going to let me in?” The softness quickly vanishes as his mouth goes tight, his skin stretching over the sharp points of his cheekbones. He’s still too thin, Éowyn thinks crossly.

“It’s not a good time,” Gríma says, and Éowyn notes the tenseness in his body, the darting glance he throws over his shoulder. Éowyn crosses her arms over her chest and gives him her best ‘do not mess with the blood of Eorl’ expression, and is gratified to see him step back just a little. Still got it, then.

“Why not?” she counters, and when Gríma opens his mouth, she slips around him as easily as dodging an opponent in high school netball.

“Éowyn!” Gríma nearly shouts after her as she moves down a corridor into the main part of his flat. A moment later, Éowyn understands. Understands that Gríma, with the deep pride and insecurity he carries right down to his bones, would not want her to see his dingy, tiny apartment, probably the only thing he could afford after he left Edoras – and knowing him, the place he was too busy working to organise to leave. Éowyn looks around and sees years of penance, years of self-denial, the price Gríma exerted from himself every day to atone for the accident that he was not truly to blame for.

“Satisfied now?” he rasps, standing in the doorway to the corridor, watching Éowyn as she looks around. Ancient furniture, stained walls, a refrigerator that looked older than the Ark – and Gríma, a proud, arrogant man whose abrasive exterior hid a deep dark well of fears. Chief among them that none of this was real, a cruel trick, a dream that he would awaken from and find himself alone and forsaken once more.

It breaks Éowyn’s heart.

She had not come here to seduce him, but in a split second, she changes her mind. So she shrugs, opens her arms. “I’ll be more satisfied if you stop looming in the doorway and come here.” She’s getting accustomed to that look on his face, half hope and half suspicion, his brilliant mind working a thousand miles a minute to reconcile the past and the present. He is not the only one confused. Éowyn herself daily struggles with her memories of imperious, cold Mr. Gálmód and the Gríma she has come to know; warily hopeful, cautious, as though ever expecting a blow rather than a kiss.

Éowyn waits for him to come to her, forces herself to be patient. Eventually, Gríma takes a step forward, and then another. Finally, he allows her to encircle her arms around him, even raises his own to hug her back. “Hey,” Éowyn says against his shirtfront; he is not as short as he seems when he is by her uncle’s side, or when he is curled in on himself in his customary hunch.

“Hello,” Gríma replies, uncertainty in his voice. Éowyn smiles, and pulls back a little, ignoring the stab of pain in her heart as Gríma involuntarily flinches. Someday, she vows, she will find whoever hurt him so badly and make them suffer for what they have done. But for now, she is content to reach up, to anchor her hands in his long hair, and pull him down for a kiss.

Éowyn likes how responsive he is. His whole body leans into the kiss, his hands spread themselves flat on her back to bring her closer. On a whim she twists her hand in his hair and feels him shudder, reaching back with her free hand to tug her own corn-silk hair down. Against her mouth Gríma makes a happy noise and immediately moves his hands to touch the golden waves streaming down. Éowyn smiles. He has something of a propensity for her hair.

How long they stand like that, Éowyn does not know. She kisses him lazily and kisses him heated, and he responds in kind. She presses up against him, rocks her hips against his, and feels the gasp her makes into her mouth, feels the hardness of his cock against her, and reaches down to touch him there.

Gríma stops kissing her at once. His sea ice eyes are horrified at his body’s betrayal, at her noticing it. His words, when they come, are rushed and garbled; Éowyn feels a surge of sorrowful affection for him, this man so ill-prepared for anything good to come to him.

“Forgive me, Éowyn, that is –” His eyes are beseeching, as though begging her to understand, to not be angry.

Éowyn is not angry. Éowyn _wants_.

Éowyn pushes him back onto his shabby little sofa, and follows him with her body. She kneels beside him, her knees on the cold floor, and moves her hands with deliberate intent to the zipper of his trousers. Gríma’s eyes are wide and disbelieving and his beautiful hands gripping the cushions of the sofa as though they are the only things anchoring him to the earth.

“You don’t have to,” he says, and Éowyn meets his eyes.

“I want to,” she says, and waits. It seems forever that Gríma considers this, his gaze far away, even as Éowyn can feel the throb and heat of him under her hands. Finally, Gríma looks back at he, gives Éowyn one singular sharp nod, both permission and benediction in one.

Éowyn smiles, and sets to work.

It could be minutes, or it could be hours, when Éowyn lifts her head from the heat and scent of Gríma. Her counsellor has his eyes closed, his head flung back, teeth gritted against the things she had been doing to him. Rigid and flushed, his cock stands straight up from his lap from amidst dark hair, and Gríma growls deep in his throat when she returns her hand to him. “I could have you on this sofa, Gríma,” she informs him, speeding her hand up just a fraction, watching the buck of his hips with satisfaction, “or we could do this on a bed. Your choice.”

“Wretched girl,” Gríma murmurs, but he is pulling her up to him, standing even as his trousers drop to the floor. Gríma saves them from any possible awkwardness by lifting her in his arms bridal style, and Éowyn smiles against his chest even as she feels his arms begin to shake with the effort. He is not a strong man, not by any means, and yet, how he tries.

His bedroom is small and dark, but Éowyn flicks on a light and sees that it is scrupulously clean. A double bed with a bedside table on one side. As though no one but Gríma has slept in his bed in four years – no, Éowyn amends, longer, that he has had no need of a second bedside table. His whole life, he has been alone.

“Put me down,” she demands, and obligingly Gríma drops her to the ground, settling her gently on her feet. There are patches of scarlet in his cheeks from the strain of holding her up. Éowyn follows Gríma’s gaze down to his bare legs and hard cock; the flush on his face deepens, and he makes to turn away.

“Hey,” Éowyn say to draw him back, and whips her dress over her head. And oh, the wideness of his eyes, the slack of his mouth when he sees her in naught but her bra and underwear. Éowyn likes her body, likes its curves and edges, the reliability and steadiness of it. She’s comfortable inside her own skin. But never before has she felt as if she is forged of not just flesh and bone, but an indefinable spark that is the reason for Gríma to look at her as though she’s hung the stars in the sky.

“Éowyn,” he breathes, taking a step closer until only a few scant inches separate them. “God. Please. Can I?” His hands are outstretched towards her, and Éowyn does not need to ask what he means. She grins.

“I suppose what you meant was ‘may I’, Mr Gálmód,” she teases. “But the answer is yes. Of course, yes.”

Éowyn had wondered, whether Gríma was a virgin. It had not seemed real, that Gríma could have had someone, held them in the dark and kissed them breathless. Not with how hesitant he is, how tentative. But she should have known better. Gríma’s touch is shy, but purposeful; he diverts Éowyn of her bra one handed and fills his palms with her breasts, and Éowyn watches stunned when he lowers his dark head to take a nipple between his lips.

“God,” she whispers, and he looks up at her, all mischief, suddenly looking years younger than usual, the hint of grey at his temples and the shadows under his eyes forgotten.

“Not quite,” he says very seriously. “But I’m flattered by the comparison.” Éowyn laughs, and shoves him onto the bed.

It’s only when he’s shirtless and Éowyn’s kicking her knickers off that she remembers something important. “Gríma,” she murmurs, and her counsellor looks up from where he’d been nipping a determined path down her sternum. “There’s – ah, something. We’ve forgotten.”

“Is that so?” he murmurs, now down to just below her ribcage. “What is it? Has the youth of today invented a new component to lovemaking that I haven’t been briefed about?” Éowyn laughs in spite of herself.

“Oddly enough, yes, and yet no,” she replies. “Protection.”

“Why? Are you going to draw a knife on me?” Gríma asks lightly, suckling a mark into the softness of her belly. Éowyn smacks him lightly on the shoulder.

“Condoms, Grim!” she says, only a little frustrated and mostly amused. Gríma freezes, and lets his head fall down to rest on the bed gently.

“Damn,” he says, his voice slightly muffled, “I’d forgotten about that.” He looks up, and she can see the self-deprecation like a shield over his face when he says, “It’s been a while.”

“Me too,” she says, and Gríma twists to he can peer a single ice-bright eye up at her.

“Twenty years, then?” he asks, and Éowyn falters for a moment.

“More like, um, six months?” she says, and Gríma hides his face again.

“I’m ancient,” he says dramatically, and Éowyn giggles, she can’t help it. She’d always known Gríma had a dark, biting sense of humour, but she hadn’t realised he could also be playful, like a cat with its claws sheathed. “I’m robbing the cradle.”

“Yes, you dirty old man,” Éowyn replies seriously, and is rewarded by his chuckle. She’d been a bit afraid he’d take it badly. Sometimes it can be difficult to predict what his triggers are. “Jokes aside, Gríma,” Éowyn continues, looking up at the ceiling. “I’m on the Pill. And – I got tested a little while ago. I’m all good. If you wanted, we could –” She doesn’t even need to ask if he’s clean. Gríma would consider the possibility of infecting her with an illness as beyond reprehensible.

“If I wanted?” he echoes, his voice disbelieving. Éowyn chances a look down at him, and obligingly he moves up her body until they are eye to eye. “Do you truly not realise? There is nothing I want more, Éowyn, to be with you. To be worthy of the privilege of standing by your side.”

“Technically, we’re lying down,” she points out. It’s not a very good joke, but Gríma smiles anyway, and to Éowyn that always feels like a victory.

“Far be it from me to contradict a lady,” he murmurs, brushing his lips over the curve of her shoulder. Éowyn shivers, and the smile on Gríma’s mouth widens, a slyness coming into his eyes. “Does my lady like that?” he asks, trailing kisses up her neck, down again, to the swell of her breasts. His fingers dance lightly along her skin, and Éowyn squirms from the pleasure-tickle sensation of his lips and fingertips combined.

“Milady does,” she confirms, moving until she’s perched on top of Gríma, only a little afraid of snapping him in half with her weight. She’s never been more aware of how naked she is, but strangely Gríma doesn’t seem bothered by his own nudity. Or maybe he’s just too preoccupied with hers.

“What do you want?” she asks him, and Gríma’s eyes are heavy-lidded, his mouth slack. He crooks a finger and beckons; Éowyn relaxes her body until her breasts brush his chest, until she can kiss him open-mouthed, her arms wrapped around him. Gríma rolls until he’s on top of her, his hands on her skin, stroking back her hair. And the moment when he presses inside of her, Éowyn will never forget it as long as she lives, no matter what else time takes from her. The way his body tenses, and then relaxes; the instinctive motion of his hips, the soft moan he makes in her ear. Éowyn wraps her legs around him and Gríma shudders.

“Okay?” he asks, and she kisses him again.

“Very okay,” she replies, and when he moves inside of her, Éowyn turns her face into the crook of his neck and bites at the soft flesh there. Gríma growls and snakes a hand down between their bodies to touch her clit, a little clumsier and slower and harder than she usually likes it, but Éowyn doesn’t mind. Gríma has their whole lives to learn to get it right, and so does she.

Later, in the dark, when Gríma’s thin body cradled in hers and her heart so full it hurts, Éowyn remembers the way he’d been incoherent at the end, babbling her name and God and yes when she’d come clenching around him. It’s the sweetest thing she can ever remember feeling, this peace, this happiness, like something has slotted into place inside of her.

Éowyn reaches over, and flips on the lamp so she can see Gríma’s face. His eyes are closed, the lashes dark against his pale skin, and when his arms tighten around her, she rests her head on his shoulder. For a time, there is only quiet, and the stillness of the night.

“I never believed…” Gríma says eventually, his voice low and full of awe and sorrow. Éowyn is almost asleep in his arms; she twists her head around to look up at him, and Gríma can only meet her gaze for a moment before he looks away. Her teasing counsellor has gone for the moment, and Éowyn cannot think of a word to say, to banish the demons that so persistently haunt him. There is nothing she can say; at least, nothing with words. “Never did I think you could care for me. That this was possible.”

Éowyn looks away from his pale, tormented face, curls herself more determinedly into his side with her hand tucked into his, and vows to never let him go.


End file.
